The Sedalia weekly bazoo. [volume] (Sedalia, Mo.) 187?-1904, 1887-06-07
MISSOURI COMPROMISE ACT.
Senator DixOn's Widow Tells
What She Knows About
lit.

Henderson, KY, June Mrs. Susas
Bullstt Dixon, widow of Archibald Dixon,
the United States Senator from Kentucky,
who has been generally held responsible
for the repeal of the missouri Comprom-
Use Act" has published long article in
the Weekly Journal of this place defend
ing her husband from the charge of "gross
violation nf faith" with the North, in Sc
cnring the repeal of that SACRED compact"
Mrs. Dixon shows in the first place that
the act of 1920. known as "the Missouri
Compromise Act" was not a sacred COM
paci between the sections, but simply ar
exercise of power son the part of the ma
jority in Congress which smother majority
had the perfect right to undo whenever it
could, and this without any violation of
plighted faith, whatever"
Mrs. Dixon says that she is preparing
history Of the Compromise act, to be pub
lished in book form, by which "it will be
shown that, on the contrary, the entire
Legislation for the three sessions of 1888,
1890 and 1820-21 was but a continued
and prolonged contest for power and terri
tory between North and South, in which
the North was the stronger and won. That
the South yielded to what she could not
successfully resist without a fight, pre-
ferring to yield her rights in the Terri
tories rather than destroy the Union-to
which she was most devotedly attached
while the North looked upon the restriction
of slavery as an advantage gained, which,
Of course, she would never willingly resign,
but did not regard the act of 1920 as
sacred compact whose repeal would be
gross violation of plighted faith"
Concerning the repeal of the Compromise
act she says: at will be shown that Judge
Douglas was the true author of the COM
prise measures of $3.50; that Mr.. Clay re-
ceived them at his hands and adopted them
as his own without even a change of
verbiage, carrying them through Congress
by sheer force of his wonderful personality;
that Judge Douglas, having himself en-
bodied In those measures that policy of
non-intervention, only needed to have it
pointed out to him that his Nebraska bill
did not carry out that policy truly, but on
its face that when convinced OF this he
needed no other motive to prompt him at
once to meet the difficulty in the only way
in which it could be honestly met-by in
cooperating in his bill virtual repeal of
that act of restriction"
The actual repeal of that act, which was
brought about in 1854 by Mr.. Dixon, was,
she contends, the logical results of those
measures introduced by Judge Douglas.
"Mr. Clay" she says, Ibid not demand the
repeal of the Missouri Compromise in
1850. He only declared the principle of it
unjust, and advocated non-intervention.
He did not demand for the south that
justice to which he declared her entitled
because he thought it could not be obtain
ed. Mr.. Dixon, in 1854, did demand it,
because he believed it to be right, because
he relied on the sense OF justice of the
Northern people to do that which was
right, and because it was the only way
by which that non-intervention, which he
himself had advocated, could be made a
reality instead of a mere sham"